Qualities To Look For In A Leader

Title: Qualities To Look For In A Leader Word Count: 479 Author: Dennis Sommer Email: Dennis@btrconline.com Article URL: www.submityourarticle.com/articles/easypublish.php?art_id=7521

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Qualities To Look For In A Leader Copyright 2006 Dennis Sommer

Are you ready to take over a leadership role in your organization ? You probably feel comfortable with your industry, managing staff, technology, and political culture at this point. But, have you developed and fined tuned the leadership qualities that make top leaders successful ? Your first step toward success is assessing your leadership capabilities. Let's see how you score on this 25 question assessment.

The following survey can be used to assess your current leadership capabilities, assessing others in your organization, or as a guideline for hiring C-level executives.

For each question, answer "Yes" if this leadership quality is consistently met. Answer "No" if this leadership quality is sometimes or rarely met.

After answering all the questions, let's see how you score.

1. Inspires and motivates people around them to perform above and beyond expectations ?

2. Acts like an owner of the company no matter what position they currently hold ?

3. Has a vision for the future and communicates that vision to everyone they encounter ?

4. Recognizes the importance of long term personal, team, and company goals ?

5. Committed to succeed in all activities taken to meet goals. Never gives up ?

6. Constantly searching for new knowledge and new ideas that will improve personal and company performance ?

7. Willing to learn better methods to make sure employees expand their knowledge base ?

8. Encourages interactive communication throughout the organization ?

9. Receptive to both positive and negative feedback ?

10. Listens to employees, peers, and customers with an open mind ?

11. Maintains a high level of trust with employees. Does not closely monitor proven employees ?

12. Embraces diversity and is highly receptive to ideas and people who are different ?

13. Action oriented self starter who takes calculated risks ?

14. Thinks fast on their feet to come up with solutions to critical situations ?

15. Helps employees develop the habits they need to be more successful ?

16. Empowers employees to make decisions ?

17. Observes employee performance and provides constructive feedback ?

18. Stimulates and relishes change ?

19. Adapts quickly to change. Does not fear change but sees it as an opportunity ?

20. Realizes the importance of a positive frame of mind and attitude. Remains positive in all situations ?

21. Apologizes and admits mistakes ?

22. Documents and refers to personal, team, and company values on a daily basis ?

23. Personal, team and company values are regarded as guiding principles for all decisions ?

24. Values are documented and referred to on a daily basis ?

25. Basis employee performance on measurable data and uses these measurements as a training tool ?

How did you score ?

For each "Yes" answer you get 1 point. For each "No" answer you get 0 points.

21 - 25 points = Top notch leader in your field

16 - 20 points = Great potential to be a successful leader with additional experience and mentoring

0 - 15 points = Additional leadership training and experience should be a priority

About the Author:

Dennis Sommer is a widely respected and world renowned authority on sales, business development and leadership performance improvement. He is a leading adviser, author, and speaker providing clients with practical strategies that improve personal and organization performance. Dennis can be reached at Dennis@btrconline.com or www.btrconline.com